BRAAVOS
At the far northwestern corner of Essos, where the Shivering Sea and the narrow sea come together, the Free City of Braavos stands upon its famed “hundred isles” amidst the shallow brackish waters of a fog-shrouded lagoon.
The youngest of the Nine Free Cities, Braavos is also the wealthiest, and in all likelihood the most powerful. Originally founded by escaped slaves, its humble beginnings were rooted in nothing more than a desire to be free. For a great part of its early history, its secret status made it of little consequence in the wider world. But in time it grew, eventually emerging as a power almost without rival.
Neither prince nor king commands in Braavos, where the rule belongs to the Sealord, chosen by the city’s magisters and keyholders from amongst the citizenry by a process as convoluted as it is arcane. From his vast waterside palace, the Sealord commands a fleet of warships second to none and a mercantile fleet whose purple hulls and purple sails have become a common sight throughout the known world.
Braavos was founded by fugitives from a large convoy of slave ships on its way from Valyria to a newly established colony in Sothoryos, who rose in a bloody rebellion, seized control of the ships on which they were being transported, and fled to “the far ends of the earth” to escape their erstwhile masters. Knowing they would be hunted, the slaves turned away from their intended destination and sailed north instead of south, seeking a refuge as far from Valyria and her vengeance as could be found. Braavosi histories claim that a group of slave women from the distant lands of the Jogos Nhai prophesied where they would find shelter: in a distant lagoon behind a wall of pine-clad hills and sea stones, where the frequent fogs would help to hide the refugees from the eyes of dragonriders passing overhead. And so it proved. These women were priestesses, called moonsingers, and to this day the Temple of the Moonsingers is the greatest in Braavos.
Since the escaped slaves came from many lands and held many faiths, the founders of Braavos created a place where all gods were given their due and decreed that none would ever be made paramount over another. They were a diverse people, whose numbers included Andals, Summer Islanders, Ghiscari, Naathi, Rhoynar, Ibbenese, Sarnori, even debtors and criminals of pure Valyrian blood. Some had been trained in arms to serve as guardsmen and slave soldiers; others were bedslaves, whose art was the giving of pleasure. There were many sorts of household slaves amongst them: tutors, nursemaids, cooks, grooms, and stewards. Others were skilled craftsmen: carpenters, armorers, masons, and weavers. Some were fishermen, some field hands, some galley slaves, many common laborers. The new freedmen spoke many tongues, so the tongue of their late masters—Valyrian—became their common language.
And because they had risked their lives in the name of freedom, the mothers and fathers of the new city vowed that no man, woman, or child in Braavos should ever be a slave, a thrall, or a bondsman. This is the First Law of Braavos, engraved in stone on the arch that spans the Long Canal. From that day to this, the Sealords of Braavos have opposed slavery in all its forms and have fought many a war against slavers and their allies.
The lagoon where the fugitives found refuge seemed a drear and uninviting place of mudflats, tidal shallows, and salt marshes at first glance, but it was well hidden behind outlying islands and sea stacks, and oft cloaked even from above by fog. Moreover, its brackish waters were rich with fish and shellfish of all sorts, the sheltering islands were thickly forested, and iron, tin, lead, slate, and other useful materials could be found nearby on mainland Essos. More crucially, the lagoon was remote and little visited; though the escaped slaves were weary of flight, most of all they feared recapture.
Undiscovered, Braavos grew and prospered. Farms, homes, and temples sprouted across the low-lying islands, whilst fishermen harvested the bounty of the great lagoon and the seas beyond. Amongst the other shellfish the Braavosi discovered was a certain sea snail, akin to those that had made Tyrosh and its dyes rich and famous. The snail yielded a dark purple dye. To change the look of their stolen ships, Braavosi captains dyed their sails this color whenever they sailed beyond the lagoon. Taking care to avoid Valyrian ships and cities wherever possible, the Braavosi began to trade with Ib, and later with the Seven Kingdoms. For a long while, however, Braavosi merchant ships carried false charts and practiced an artful deceit when questioned about their home port. Thus, for more than a century, Braavos was known as the Secret City.
Sealord Uthero Zalyne put an end to that secrecy, sending forth his ships to every corner of the world to proclaim the existence and location of Braavos, and invite men of all nations to celebrate the 111th festival of the city’s founding. By that time all of the original escaped slaves were dead, along with all of their former masters. Even so, Uthero had sent envoys from the Iron Bank to Valyria several years prior, to clear the way for what became known as the Uncloaking or the Unmasking of Uthero. The dragonlords proved to have little interest in the descendants of slaves who had escaped a century before, and the Iron Bank paid handsome settlements to the grandchildren of the men whose ships the founders had seized and sailed away (whilst refusing to pay for the value of the slaves themselves).
The Titan of Braavos. (illustration credit 171)
Thus was accord achieved. The anniversary of the Uncloaking is celebrated every year in Braavos with ten days of feasting and masked revelry—a festival like none other in all the known world, culminating at midnight on the tenth day, when the Titan roars and tens of thousands of revelers and celebrants remove their masks as one.
Despite its humble origins, Braavos has not only become the wealthiest of the Free Cities, but also one of the most impregnable. Volantis may have its Black Walls, but Braavos has a wall of ships such as no other city in the world possesses. Lomas Longstrider marveled at the Titan of Braavos—the great fortress of stone and bronze in the shape of a warrior that bestrides the main entrance into the lagoon—but the true wonder is the Arsenal. There, one of the purple-hulled war galleys of Braavos can be built in a day. All the vessels are constructed following the same design, so that all the many parts can be prepared in advance, and skilled shipbuilders work upon different sections of the vessel simultaneously to hasten the labor. To organize such a feat of engineering is unprecedented; one need only look at the raucous, confused construction in the shipyards of Oldtown to see the truth of this.
It would be folly, however, not to give the Titan its due. With his proud head and fiery eyes looming close to four hundred feet above the sea, the Titan is a fortress of a type never seen before or since, cast in the form of a huge giant straddling two seamounts. The Titan’s legs and lower torso are black granite, originally a natural stone archway, carved and shaped by three generations of sculptors and stonemasons and wrapped in a pleated bronze skirt; above the waist, the colossus is bronze, with green-dyed hemp for hair. When seen from the sea for the first time, the Titan is a sight terrifying to behold. His eyes are huge beacon fires, lighting the way for returning ships back inside the lagoon. Within his bronze body are halls and chambers, murder holes and arrow slits, such that any vessel that dared to force the passage would surely be destroyed. Enemy ships can easily be steered onto the rocks by the watchmen inside the Titan, and stones and pots of burning pitch can be dropped onto the decks of any that attempt to pass between the Titan’s legs without leave. This has seldom been necessary, however; not since the Century of Blood has any enemy been so rash as to attempt to provoke the Titan’s wrath.
The Iron Bank of Braavos (illustration credit 172)
Today Braavos is one of the world’s greatest ports and welcomes trading ships of all nations (save for slavers). Within the vast lagoon, Braavosi ships dock at the splendid Purple Harbor, located near the Sealord’s Palace. Other vessels must use the port called the Ragman’s Harbor, a poorer and rougher port by all accounts. Still, there is so much wealth to be had in Braavos that ships come from as far as Qarth and the Summer Isles to trade there.
Braavos is also home to one of the most powerful banks in the world, whose roots stretch back to the beginnings of the city, when a few of the fugitives took to hiding such valuables as they had in an abandoned iron mine to keep them safe from thieves and pirates. As the city grew and prospered, the shafts and chambers of the mine began to fill. Rather than let their treasure sit idle in the earth, the wealthier Braavosi began to make loans to their less fortunate brethren.
Thus was born the Iron Bank of Braavos, whose renown (or infamy, to hear some tell it) now extends to every corner of the known world. Kings, princes, archons, triarchs, and merchants beyond count travel from the ends of the earth to seek loans from the heavily guarded vaults of the Iron Bank.
The Iron Bank will have its due, it is said. Those who borrow from the Braavosi and fail to repay their debts oft have cause to rue such folly, for the Bank has been known to topple lords and princes and has also been rumored to send assassins against those it cannot remove (though this has never been conclusively proved).
Braavos is a city built on mud and sand, where a man is never more than a few feet from the water. Some say the city has more canals than streets. This is an exaggeration, yet it cannot be denied that the swiftest way to move about the city is over water, in one of the myriad serpent boats that ply the canals, rather than by foot through the maze of streets, alleyways, and arched bridges. Pools and fountains are seen everywhere in Braavos, celebrating the city’s ties to the sea and the “wooden walls” that defend her. The brackish waters of the lagoon that surrounds the “hundred isles” were the source of much of the city’s early wealth, yielding up oysters, eels, crabs, crawfish, clams, rays, and many sorts of fish.
Yet the waters that nourish and protect Braavos also imperil her, for during the past two centuries it has become apparent that some of the city’s islands are sinking under the weight of the buildings that now cover them. The oldest part of the city, just north of the Ragman’s Habor, has in fact already sunk, and is now known as the Drowned Town. Even so, there are still some Braavosi, of the poorest sort, who dwell in the towers and upper floors of its half-submerged buildings.
Archmaester Matthar’s The Origins of the Iron Bank and Braavos provides one of the more detailed accounts of the bank’s history and dealings, so far as they can be discovered; the bank is famous for its discretion and its secrecy. Matthar recounts that the founders of the Iron Bank numbered three-and-twenty; sixteen men and seven women, each of whom possessed a key to bank’s great subterranean vaults. Their descendants, whose numbers now exceed one thousand, are known as keyholders to this day, though the keys they display proudly on formal occasions are now entirely ceremonial. Certain of the founding families of Braavos have declined over the centuries, and a few have lost their wealth entirely, yet even the meanest still cling to their keys and the honors that go with them.
The Iron Bank is not ruled by the keyholders alone, however. Some of the wealthiest and most powerful families in Braavos today are of more recent vintage, yet the heads of these houses own shares in the bank, sit on its secret councils, and have a voice in selecting the men who lead it. In Braavos, as many an outsider has observed, golden coins count for more than iron keys. The bank’s envoys cross the world, oft upon the bank’s own ships, and merchants, lords, and even kings treat with them almost as equals.
The temple district of Braavos. (illustration credit 173)
Braavos is a city renowned for its architecture: the sprawling Sealord’s Palace, with its magnificent menagerie of queer beasts and birds from all around the world; the imposing Palace of Justice; the huge Temple of the Moonsingers; the aqueduct that the Braavosi named the sweetwater river, carrying much-needed freshwater from the mainland of Essos (for the water in the canals is brackish, muddy, and too foul to drink because of the refuse thrown into it by the city’s inhabitants); the towers of the keyholders and noble families; and the House of Red Hands, a great hospice and center of healing. In and amongst these noble structures are countless shops, brothels, inns, alehouses, guildhalls, and merchants’ exchanges. Along the streets and bridges stand statues of past Sealords, lawgivers, sailors, warriors, even poets, singers, and courtesans.
The temples of Braavos are far famed as well, and some are truly wonders to behold. The Temple of the Moonsingers is the foremost of these, for the Braavosi have a particular reverence for that deity, as previously recounted. The Father of Waters is almost as venerated; his watery temple is built anew each year for his feast days. The Lord of Light, red R’hllor, has a great temple on Braavos as well, for his worshippers have grown ever more numerous in the past hundred years.
Descended from a hundred different peoples, the Braavosi honor a hundred different gods. The greatest of these have temples, but deep in the heart of the city can be found the Isle of the Gods, where even the least of the gods have temples. The Sept-Beyond-the-Sea and its septons and septas offer worship to the Seven every day for sailors off the ships from the Seven Kingdoms that come to Braavos to trade.
In Braavos men and women from far-flung corners of the world may sit together, as they have done for hundreds of years, eating and drinking and telling tales. All are welcome in the Secret City, it is said.
Many of the courtesans of Braavos are celebrated in song and story, and a few have even been immortalized in bronze or marble. In the Seven Kingdoms, the most storied and infamous of these are the Black Pearls. The first woman to bear that name was the captain and pirate queen Bellegere Otherys, who reigned briefly as one of the nine paramours of King Aegon IV Targaryen, and bore him a bastard daughter, Bellenora, the second Black Pearl, a famous courtesan acclaimed by the singers of her day as the most beautiful woman in all the world. Her descendants became courtesans as well, each in turn known as the Black Pearl, and each having in her veins some measure of the blood of the dragon to this very day.
It must also be said that the courtesans of Braavos are renowned throughout the world, yet are all free women, unlike the more famous beauties of the pleasure gardens of Lys or the brothels of Volantis. Their art is not only for the bedchamber; their wit and their bearing make them much sought after by the richest merchants, the boldest captains, the most distinguished visitors. Keyholders, lords, and princes seek their favors. The most famous courtesans take poetic names that add to their allure and mystery. Singers vie for their patronage, whilst the bravos with their slender swords oft duel to the death in the name of a courtesan.
Pilman of Lannisport, a ship’s captain, provided an account of a water-dancer duel to the Citadel. The water dancers, he tells us, do seem to barely skim upon the surface, but it is an illusion caused by the darkness, for they always duel at night. The captain insisted he never saw anything like it for grace or skill, however.
The coins of the Faceless Men of Braavos (front and back). (illustration credit 174)
The swordsmanship of the bravos of the Secret City is as famed as the beauty of her courtesans. Largely unarmored, and wielding slender pointed blades far lighter than the longswords of the Seven Kingdoms, these warriors of the streets practice a swift, deadly style of fighting. The greatest bravos call themselves water dancers, given the custom of dueling upon the Moon Pool near the Sealord’s Palace; it is claimed that true water dancers can fight and kill upon the pool’s surface without disturbing the water itself.
Though many a deadly swordsman can be found amongst the bravos and water dancers, by tradition the greatest of them all is the First Sword, who commands the personal guard of the Sealord and protects his person at all public events. Once chosen, Sealords serve for life. Inevitably, there are always those who wish to cut that life short to effect some change in policy. Through the centuries, the First Swords have fought many famous duels, taken part in a dozen wars, and saved the lives of scores of Sealords, for good and ill.
No discussion of Braavos would be complete without a mention of the Faceless Men. Shrouded in mystery and rumor, this secretive society of assassins is said to be older than Braavos itself, with roots that go back to Valyria at the height of its glory. Little is known for certain about these killers, however.
B EYOND THE F REE C ITIES
DO WE KNOW all of the lands and peoples who exist in the world? Surely we do not. Our maps have their limits, and even the finest of them raise as many questions as they answer about the far lands to the east, featuring all-too-frequent blank spaces where we have no knowledge. Yet it may profit us much to discuss something of those places we do know, even if their commerce with the Seven Kingdoms is small at best compared to that of the Free Cities.
THE SUMMER ISLES
South of Westeros, cradled in the deep blue waters of the Summer Sea, the Summer Isles bask in the warm southern sun. More than fifty islands make up this verdant archipelago. Many are so small a man could walk across them in an hour, but Jhala, largest of the isles, stretches two hundred leagues from tip to tip. Beneath its towering green mountains are vast forests, steaming jungles, beaches of green and black sand, mighty rivers teeming with monstrous crocodiles, and fertile vales. Walano and Omboru, though less than half the size of Jhala, are each larger than all the Stepstones combined. These three islands are home to more than nine-tenths of the peoples of the isles.
Flowers of a thousand different sorts bloom in profusion on the Summer Isles, filling the air with their perfume. The trees are heavy with exotic fruits, and a myriad of brightly colored birds flitter through the skies. From their plumage the Summer Islanders make their fabulous feathered cloaks. Beneath the green canopies of the rain forests prowl spotted panthers larger than any lion and packs of lean red wolves. Tribes of monkeys swing through the branches of the trees above. Apes abound as well: the “old red men” of Omboru, silver pelts in the mountains of Jhala, night stalkers on Walano.
The Summer Isles (illustration credit 175)
The Summer Islanders are a dark people, black of hair and eye, with skins as brown as teak or as black as polished jet. For much of their recorded history, they lived in isolation from the rest of mankind. Their earliest maps, as carved into the famous Talking Trees of Tall Trees Town, show no lands but the isles themselves, surrounded by a vast world-spanning ocean. As islanders, they took to the seas in the dawn of days, first in oared coracles, then in larger, swifter ships with sails of woven hemp, yet few ever ventured beyond the sight of their own shores … and those who sailed beyond the horizons did not always return.
Lomas Longstrider, who visited the Summer Isles in his search for wonders, recorded that the sages of the isles claimed that their ancestors once reached the western shores of Sothoryos and founded cities there, only to have them overwhelmed and destroyed by the same forces that wiped out later Ghiscari and Valyrian settlements on that perilous continent. The Citadel’s archives hold a few ancient chronicles of Valyria, but none speak of these supposed cities, and there are maesters who cast doubts on the truth of these claims.
The first recorded contact between the Summer Isles and the wider world occurred at the height of the Old Empire of Ghis. A Ghiscari merchant ship made landfall on Walano after being blown off course by a storm, only to flee in terror at the first sight of the local inhabitants, whom the Ghiscari took for demons with skins burned black by the fires of hell. Thereafter, Ghiscari sailors took care to stay well away from the Demon Isle, as they named Walano on their charts; they had no inkling of the existence of Omboru, Jhala, or the lesser islands.
This contact had a profound effect upon the Summer Islanders themselves, for it proved that other peoples lived in the lands beyond the waves. Their curiosity (and avarice) thus awakened, the princes of the isles began to build larger and stronger ships, capable of carrying sufficient provisions to cross long stretches of ocean whilst withstanding even the fiercest storms at sea. Malthar Xaq, a prince of the small island of Koj, was the greatest of these shipbuilders, and is remembered today as Malthar the Windrider and Malthar the Mapmaker.
A new era of exploration and trade began as the great ships struck out across the waters, dispatched by Malthar and his fellow princes. Many did not return. More did. Naath, the Basilisk Isles, the northern coasts of Sothoryos, and the southern coasts of both Westeros and Essos were all visited, and within less than half a century, a thriving trade had grown up between the Summer Isles and the Freehold of Valyria. The islands lacked iron, tin, and other metals, but were rich in gemstones (emeralds, rubies, and sapphires, and pearls of many sorts), spice (nutmeg, cinnamon, pepper), and hardwoods. A fashion developed amongst the dragonlords for monkeys, apes, panther cubs, and parrots. Bloodwood, ebony, mahogany, purpleheart, blue mahoe, burl, tigerwood, goldenheart, pink ivory, and other rare and precious woods were also much in demand, along with palm wine, fruit, and feathers.
The Valyrians offered gold for slaves as well. Then as now, the Summer Islanders were a handsome people, tall, strong, graceful, and quick to learn. These qualities drew pirates and slavers from Valyria, the Basilisk Isles, and Old Ghis. Much woe ensued as these raiders descended on peaceful villages to carry their inhabitants into bondage. For a time, the princes of the isles abetted this trade by selling captured foes and rivals to the slavers.
Maester Gallard’s Children of Summer remains a chief source on the history of the Summer Isles. Much of the history—which was once obscured by the fact that so many of the Summer Isles histories were recorded in highly complicated, formal verse—have been rendered quite clear by his exhaustive efforts. Though certain controversies remain—Mollos’s questioning of Gallard’s chronology of the early princes of Walano being one example—no better work on the subject has appeared.
The histories carved into the Talking Trees tell us that these “Years of Shame” endured for the better part of two centuries, until a warrior woman named Xanda Qo, Princess of Sweet Lotus Vale (who had herself been enslaved for a time), united all the islands under her rule and made an end to it.
As iron was scarce and costly in the isles, armor was little known, and the long thrusting spears and short stabbing spears traditional amongst the Summer Islanders had proved of little worth against the steel swords and axes of the slavers, so Xanda Qo armed her sailors with tall bows of goldenheart, a wood found only on Jhala and Omboru. These great bows far outranged the recurved bows of horn and sinew the slavers carried, and could throw a yard-long shaft hard enough to pierce through mail and boiled leather and even good steel plate.
A swan ship of the Summer Isles. (illustration credit 176)
To give her archers a solid platform from which to draw and loose, Xanda Qo built ships larger than any previously seen in the Summer Sea—tall graceful ships cunningly fit together without so much as a single nail, many walled with rare hardwoods of the isles made harder still with magics, so the rams of slaver ships cracked and splintered against their sides. As swift as they were strong, her ships oft sported tall, curved prows carved into the shapes of birds and beasts. These “swan necks” won them the sobriquet of “swan ships.”
Though it took the best part of a generation, the Summer Islanders, led by Princess Xanda’s daughter (and eventual successor) Chatana Qo, the Arrow of Jhahar, ultimately prevailed in what came to be known as the Slavers’ Wars. Though the unity of the isles did not survive her own reign (for the Arrow wed unwisely and did not rule as well as she had fought) slavers even now will flee at the sight of a swan ship, for each of these proud vessels is known to carry a complement of deadly archers armed with goldenheart bows. To this day, the bowmen (and women) of the Summer Isles are esteemed the finest in the world. Nor can their bows be matched by common bows, for the princes of the isles have forbidden the export of goldenheart wood since the Slavers’ Wars; only bows of dragonbone are known to surpass them, and those are exceedingly rare.
Certain Summer Islanders with a desire to see the wider world have been known to take up service abroad as mercenary bowmen and sellsails. Others have joined the pirates of the Basilisk Isles; some became captains of dark renown whose deeds are spoken of with dread in ports as distant as Qarth and Oldtown. Summer Islanders have risen high amongst the free companies of the Disputed Lands, as guardsmen in the retinues of the merchant princes of the Free Cities, or as pit fighters in the slave cities of Astapor, Yunkai, and Meereen … but despite the undoubted prowess and skill at arms they display as individuals, the islanders are not a warlike people.
The Summer Islanders have never once invaded any lands beyond their own shores nor attempted the conquest of any foreign people. Their great swan ships sail farther and faster than the vessels of any other nation, to the very ends of the earth, yet the princes of the Summer Islands have no warships as such and seem to prefer trade and exploration to conquest.
Throughout their long history, the Summer Islands have been united under a single ruler no more than half a dozen times, and never for long. Today, each of the smaller islands has its own ruler, styled as a prince or princess in the Common Tongue; the larger islands (Jhala, Omboru, and Walano) oft have several rival princes.
Nonetheless, the isles are by and large a peaceful place. Such wars as are fought there are highly ritualized, with battles that resemble tourney mêlées, wherein bands of warriors meet on battlefields chosen and consecrated in advance, at times deemed auspicious by their priests. They fight with spears and slings and wooden shields, just as their forebears did five thousand years ago; the goldenheart bows and yard-long shafts carried by their archers into battle against foes from across the sea are never used against their own people, for their gods have forbidden this.
Wars on the Summer Isles seldom last longer than a day, and do no harm to any but the warriors themselves. No crops are destroyed, no homes are put to the torch, no cities are sacked, no children are harmed, no women are raped (though warrior women oft fight beside their men in the line of battle). Even the defeated princes suffer neither death nor disfigurement though they must leave their homes and palaces to spend the remainder of their days in exile.
Though Jhala is the largest of the Summer Isles, Walano is the most populous. There can be found Last Lament, with its great harbor, sleepy Lotus Point, and sun-dappled Tall Trees Town, where priestesses in feathered robes carve songs and stories into the trunks of the enormous tower trees that shade the town. On these Talking Trees can be read the whole history of the Summer Islanders, together with the commandments of their many gods and the laws by which they live their lives.
THE OTHER SUMMER ISLES
Whilst Jhala, Walano, and Omboru dominate the archipelago, a number of the smaller isles are worthy of mention:
THE SINGING STONES, west of the main isles, have jagged peaks so riddled with holes and airways that they make a strange music when the wind blows. The people of the Stones can tell which way the wind is blowing from the sound of their song. Whether gods or men taught the stones to sing, no one can say.
STONE HEAD, the northernmost island in the chain, is plainly the work of men; the north face of this sea-girt rock has been carved in the stern likeness of some forgotten god, glowering out across the sea. His is the last visage that Summer Islanders see as they sail north to Westeros.
KOJ, once home to Malthar the Mapmaker, still boasts the finest shipyards in the archipelago. Three-quarters of the islanders’ famed swan ships are built on Koj, and the Pearl Palace, seat of the Princes of Koj, is renowned for its collection of charts and maps.
ABULU, a small desolate isle northeast of Walano, served for more than two years as home to Nymeria and her followers. The princes of the isles refused to allow her to settle on the larger islands, for fear of waking the wroth of Valyria. As most of Nymeria’s people were female, Abulu became known as the Isle of Women, a name it still bears today. Disease, hunger, and slave raids took a steady toll of the Rhoynar there, until finally Nymeria led her ten thousand ships back to sea in search of a new refuge. A few thousand of her followers chose to remain behind, however, and their descendants remain on the Isle of Women to this day.
Though a score of gods both great and small are honored on the Summer Isles, a special reverence is shown to the god and goddess of love, beauty, and fertility. The union of male and female is sacred to these deities; by joining together in this act of worship, the islanders believe, men and women give honor to the gods who made them. Be they rich or poor, male or female, of high birth or low, all Summer Islanders are expected to dwell for a time in the temples of love that dot the islands, sharing their bodies with any who might desire them.
Most serve the gods for no more than a year, but those deemed the most beautiful, the most compassionate, and the most skilled remain. In Braavos they might be called courtesans, whilst in King’s Landing they were thought no more than whores, but on Jhala, Walano, Omboru, and the other isles these priests and priestesses are much esteemed, for here the giving of carnal pleasure is regarded as an art as worthy of respect as music, sculpture, or dance.
Today the Summer Islanders are a common sight in Oldtown and King’s Landing, and the swan ships with their billowing clouds of sails traverse all the seas of earth. Bold mariners, their captains scorn to hug the coasts like other seafarers but instead strike out fearlessly across the ocean deeps, far from the sight of land. There are certain indications that explorers from Koj may well have mapped the western coasts of Sothoryos to the very bottom of the world and discovered strange lands and stranger peoples far to the south, or across the endless waters of the Sunset Sea … but the truth of these tales is known only to the princes of the isles and the captains who serve them.
Worship at a Summer Island temple of love. (illustration credit 177)